Activities for the garden

Between school visits and the conference we attended yesterday, my head is swimming with ideas for garden activity ideas for children.  At our first school visit, we got to see Brandlehow Primary's garden. Their pond was the thing that stood out to me first.  Children love to observe the frogs and insects in the pond. For me it was definitely a highlight of the garden.

Next, we visited Hampton Hills Junior School.  Jim Bliss, a fantastic representative from the Royal Horticultural Society, got the kids involved with an herb activity.  He passed out different herb plants, and then passed out a seed from one of the plants and the children had to figure out which plant it came from.  It was really fun for the kids, and it got them thinking about scientific method.

Hampton Hills Junior School also has a great pond.  I liked that theirs is raised so the kids can see well into it.  We got to do some gardening with the kids outdoors. It was wonderful to see how engaged they were.

At the Growing Schools Conference, I attended two workshops.  The first was about how to keep an entire class active in the garden at the same time.  They emphasized having multiple groups doing different activities.  Some activities should require less intensive supervision so that focus can be put on kids using tools, for safety reasons.  We did some soil texturing, weeding, and they had a scavenger hunt.  To get us into groups, the leaders passed out cards with different crops on them and we had to find people in the same plant family. It was very clever.

Today, we visited a community garden that does a ton of programming with school children.  I loved their bug hotels.  I think this could be a great thing for Minnesota schools to incorporate.

So far, I am having a wonderful time here and have already learned a lot.  I'm sure new ideas will keep coming.  I can't wait to put some of these ideas into use with our partner schools in Minnesota!